Use these examples of Sensory Images to test your sensory preferences and skills

Imagine a waterfall in front of you. See the sunlight reflected in it, making it glitter like a fluid diamond; feel the pressure created by the water’s force; hear the high and low pitches of a crescendo; taste the water droplets on your lips; smell the pungent, enriched air.

Imagine you are wringing a towel while keeping it in a straight line. Visualize the facet of the navicular spinning on the head of the talus. Notice that the medial aspect of the transverse tarsal joint is moving more than the lateral. After twisting one foot, compare the feel and balance of both feet in a standing position.

Imagine the erector spinae muscles. Lying deep to them are the transversospinalis muscles. Flex your spine and roll down slowly, focusing on the transversospinalis muscles. Roll up again, initiating from the transversospinalis.

Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery, Second Edition, presents nearly 500 illustrated exercises—including numerous exercises that are set to music and available on the book’s product page—to help you understand and achieve proper posture and alignment and release excess stress. This new edition includes over 600 illustrations of anatomical imagery and updated chapters with the latest information on dynamic alignment and imagery.

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Description

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Product Description

Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery, Second Edition, expands on the classic text and reference written by Eric Franklin, an internationally renowned teacher, dancer, and choreographer who has been sharing his imagery techniques for 25 years.

In this new edition, Franklin shows you how to use imagery, touch, and movement exercises to improve your coordination and alignment. These exercises will also help you relieve tension, enhance the health of your spine and back, and prevent back injury.
This expanded new edition includes

more than 600 imagery exercises along with nearly 500 illustrations to help you visualize the exercises and use them in various contexts;

updated chapters throughout the book, including new material on integrated dynamic alignment exercises and dynamic alignment and imagery.

This book will help you discover your natural flexibility and quickly increase your power to move. You’ll learn elements of body design. You’ll explore how to use imagery to improve your confidence, and you’ll discover imagery conditioning programs that will lead you toward better alignment, safer movement, increased fitness, and greater joy. Further, you’ll examine how to apply this understanding to your discipline or training to improve your performance.

Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery, Second Edition, will help you experience the biomechanical and anatomical principles that are crucial to dancers, other performing artists, yoga and Pilates teachers and practitioners, and athletes. The techniques and exercises presented in the book will guide you in improving your posture—and they will positively affect your thoughts and attitude about yourself and others and help you feel and move better both mentally and physically.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: How I Came to Use Imagery
Reinforcing What You Want
Purpose and Will
Using Imagery for Alignment

Part I: Posture and Dynamic AlignmentChapter 1: Roots of Imagery for Alignment
In Search of Ideal Posture
Somatic Disciplines
Summary

Chapter 5: Benefits and Types of Imagery
Benefits: What Imagery Can Do for You
Types of Imagery
Styles of Imagery Delivery
Self-Talk: The Internal Monologue
Summary

Chapter 6: General Guidelines Before Using Imagery
Factors That Influence Successful Imagery
Guidelines for Using Imagery
Training Your Ability to Use Imagery
Concentration and Attention
Stages of Learning
Positions for Anatomical Imagery Work
Using Imagery When in Motion
Image Narrative, Image Bundles, and Relational Imagery
Summary

Text for introductory exercise, dance, and movement classes and reference for upper-level dance students, dance educators, and somatic education instructors. Resource for instructors of Pilates, yoga, bodyworks, and other groups interested in alignment and imagery. Also a resource for athletes.

Eric Franklin is director and founder of the Franklin Institute in Uster, Switzerland. He has more than 35 years' experience as a dancer and choreographer, and he has shared imagery techniques in his teaching since 1986.

Franklin has taught extensively throughout the United States and Europe at the Julliard School in New York, the Royal Ballet School in London, the Danish Ballet in Copenhagen, the Dance Academy of Rome, and the Institute for Psychomotor Therapy in Zurich; he was also a guest lecturer at the University of Vienna. He has provided training to Olympic and world-champion athletes and professional dance troupes such as Cirque du Soleil and the Forum de Dance in Monte Carlo. Franklin earned a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a BS from the University of Zurich. He has been on the faculty of the American Dance Festival since 1991.

Franklin is coauthor of the bestselling book Breakdance, which received a New York City Public Library Prize in 1984, and author of 100 Ideen für Beweglichkeit and Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance (both books about imagery in dance and movement). He is a member of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science.

Franklin lives near Zurich, Switzerland.

“The Franklin Method training as outlined in this book is the most intelligent approach to learning about the workings of the body that I have ever attended. It is not just information but the experience of our design as we learn that is transforming.”

“The Franklin Method has had a profound influence on my personal and professional life. Eric Franklin’s evolution of imagery and its application contain the knowledge and power to create a quantum leap in our understanding of human movement and our own potential.“